


How Many Miles

by Las



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Christmas, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year, Herc drops by for the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Many Miles

Herc shows up at Mako's apartment and it's like picking up a conversation they had paused a year ago, which is exactly when they saw each other last. When she opens the door, she's already smiling, and that's what makes him finally smile too after his journey of who knows how many thousand miles. It's good to see a familiar face. It's better that it's Mako's.

Herc opens his arms and Mako throws herself into his embrace, and he is selfishly glad for her abandon. He has seen her in action and he has seen her at rest, but during the war, it had become rarer and rarer to see her alight like this. The end of the war took many things from them both, but it gave her Raleigh, and Raleigh brings the light out in Mako the way nothing had in ages. As the months passed, Herc discovered that - much to his surprise - he can too. Now that the grief has become part of the fabric of their daily lives, the contours of their shared history have begun to reemerge, like a reminder. It calls him back from the solitude he has chosen to live his life in now: the realization that he will always love her. 

"Welcome home," Mako says with her face tucked against his neck.

It's not really his home. He doesn't feel like he has a home anymore, but he appreciates the sentiment.

+

Mako is still with whatever became of the PPDC these days, a director of sorts in research and development, Herc doesn't really know. He feels a little guilty not keeping up on all the details, but he has been purposefully distancing himself from thinking about that stuff. He's got enough of it to last a lifetime, and he's trying to make it so that when he thinks back to his time with them, he mostly remembers things like sharing a coffee with Stacker, giving Mako a piggy-back ride, or the times Chuck's smile didn't have that sharp, sharp edge.

Mako's apartment is neat and decorated in peaches and soft golds, and Herc still knows it like the back of his hand. That framed photo of Stacker in dress blues. That godawful vase Tendo got her for a housewarming gift. The way her couch sinks under his weight like it's greeting an old friend. He groans exaggeratedly as he collapses on it, and Mako tells him not to break her furniture.

The place is not as nice as the apartment she had in Singapore, but it's much nicer than the one in Los Angeles before that. He's not sure whether it's the program that shuttles her around or if she's the one dragging it around in her wake. Herc wouldn't be terribly surprised with either possibility. She told him last Christmas that she can't imagine working anywhere else.

"Where did you go this time?" Mako asks, handing him a beer, and he tells her.

So yes, Herc has taken up traveling for the past few years, just endless traveling all over the world. The first place he went to was Barcelona, because Angela always wanted to go, and he went from there, staying in cheap hostels and clutching anonymity close to his chest. He makes friends with people he'll never talk to again once he crosses the border. He reads books that he'll leave in cafes and stations when he's done with them. He stands on shorelines, letting the water lap over his feet as he tries to make his peace with the ocean, and he goes on, he keeps on keeping on wherever it is momentum decides to spit him out next.

A few years ago, also at Mako's, Herc overheard Raleigh say to Tendo that he thinks Herc just needs to escape. It's not really true. Herc knows there is no escape from whatever it is Raleigh has decided Herc is suffering from. (What _isn't_ Herc suffering from?) By contrast, Herc focuses on symptoms instead of diagnosis: he just can't sit still, that's all.

Everywhere he goes, he finds new things he wishes he talked to Chuck about. He finds places he thinks Stacker would have liked to visit. 

Mako is pleased with his souvenirs for her. A necklace with an abalone pendant from the Marshall Islands and a book of poetry by a local writer when he was in Manila. The poetry was an impulse buy. Herc was only just sifting through it casually, but then there was this one poem on page eighteen that gave him pause. He read it again, then brought the book to the cashier. Herc bookmarked the page before he wrapped it. Mako sets the book aside after thanking him, but Herc knows she'll read it later and understand. They share similar scars, and sometimes it's not that they know each other well so much as they know themselves, and trust each other with the rest.

"How's Raleigh?" he asks, on his second beer.

"He's with Maria and her family in La Paz," Mako replies, and they talk a little bit about how it seems like this is going to be the one. Raleigh is head over heels for her, and Maria is head over heels for him, and Herc starts a fake argument about which of them will get to be his best man.

"You'll be the one giving him away," he says, giving Mako a pointed look, and she laughs.

She's curled up on the love seat opposite him, framed by the window behind her that looks out to the New York night, the New York sea of lights. Herc hasn't ever considered himself to be a city person, but tucked into this little bubble of warmth on the upper east side, he feels contentedly contained the way you do when it's raining and you're inside with everything you could ever want within arm's reach.

Okay, not everything, but close enough.

+

Herc sleeps in her guest room for fourteen hours and wakes up disoriented, forgetting where he is, reaching for Angela beside him.

+

The kitchen smells like bacon when he blearily stumbles in, and the first things he says is, "Isn't ten o'clock at night a bit late for breakfast?"

"Breakfast is the first meal of the day," Mako says, "and this is your first meal of the day. Eat up."

In addition to the bacon, there are eggs and toasted english muffins. There's both orange juice and coffee, and after a few seconds of standing stupidly in front of them trying to make up his mind, Herc pours himself both the juice and the coffee.

He sits down at his usual place at her table when he comes down to visit, his back to the wall so he can see everyone. He likes to tip his chair back and rest its weight against the wall, which Mako hates, but for now he just eats his breakfast and tries not to feel like he just spent a day and a half catnapping on airplanes, which he did.

"And how is Max?" Herc asks, eyeing a photo of teenaged Mako and teenaged Chuck grinning at the camera with arms around Max in the middle like they're both claiming to be the dog's favorite.

"He's great," Mako replies as she pours herself a mug of coffee. "Tendo says Max is always following his son around. They're best friends now."

"Ah, the little guy can walk now, hmm?"

"They're a formidable duo."

"Max is quite good at being a kid's best friend. One of his god-given talents, I'd say. Next to slobbering."

They stay up all night, and Herc tells Mako about the Marshall Islands and Vietnam and Nepal, and Mako tells him about Raleigh and Tendo and Hermann and Newt. They don't talk much about themselves, which is something Herc didn't notice before he started traveling. In conversation, Mako and Herc tend to focus on things adjacent to themselves. Sometimes being good friends with someone doesn't mean knowing everything about them; sometimes you're simply comfortable enough to not feel the need perform the commonly accepted facts of yourself. When Herc and Mako are comfortable, they're self-contained.

"Will you stay for new year's?" Mako asks. Outside, dawn is beginning to gild the snow. Light creeps into the room, stealing the intimacy of darkness from them. They've moved to the living room and they're sitting on opposite ends of the couch facing each other, and she is beginning to nod off. Her head is propped against a cushion, and her hair has come loose from her ponytail, framing her face.

"Is that all right with you?" he asks in reply. 

Mako smiles, sweet with exhaustion, and nods. The matter settled, she closes her eyes and falls asleep in a matter of seconds. Herc covers her with the throw from the loveseat, and gets a flash from twenty years ago when usually at this point he or Stacker would then carry her to the bedroom. He kisses her forehead instead, then goes to do the dishes in the kitchen.


End file.
